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Stuck in the Middle

JORDAN

The Jordanian government approved an electoral law two years ago, and amendments to it in February, that officials portrayed as a step forward in the kingdom’s slow but steady democratization.

The measure is intended to increase representation for women while lowering the minimum age for lawmakers from 30 to 25, for example. It is also designed to give birth to new political parties and coalitions that reflect the will of moderate Jordanians and temper Islamist tendencies in the population, the Arab News wrote.

Still, when voters go to the polls to elect a new lower house of parliament on Sept. 10, “it will be a moment of truth” for the kingdom’s reform policies, wrote Chatham House, a United Kingdom-based think tank.

The law’s defenders say that expanding the pool of potential elected officials might help the government address Jordan’s poor economy and the instability surrounding events in its neighborhood, namely the Palestinian West Bank and the Israelis who occupy it, Xinhua reported.

But the new system also retains much of the old one in ways that exhibit the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan’s complicated position today in the Middle East.

Jordanian electoral law, for instance, still favors the countryside and tribal provinces – where support for King Abdullah II is stronger compared with urban centers where liberals favor democratic reforms and Islamists related to the main opposition group, the Islamic Action Front (IAF). The latter is the ideological ally of Hamas, now fighting Israel in the Gaza Strip, Reuters explained.

Usually, parties loyal to the monarch win these elections handily. This year, however, the events in Gaza could change things. Many Jordanian voters are the descendants of those who fled their lands in Israel after a series of wars erupted following the founding of the Jewish state in 1948.

“The conflict is likely to have an outsized impact on this year’s election and popular domestic support for the Palestinian cause could help the IAF and other Islamist candidates in their electoral bids,” wrote Washington DC-based analytical group Freedom House.

Recently, for instance, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said that any Israeli plan to push Palestinians out of the West Bank into Jordanian territory would treated as a “declaration of war,” noted Middle East Monitor. Those comments came after Israeli forces launched major strikes in the West Bank, leaving dozens dead and much destruction in their way, as the Associated Press described.

The pressure between internal and external forces is one reason why US-friendly Jordan, which signed a peace deal with Israel in 1994, is not necessarily a beacon of stability in the region any longer, argued Lancaster University international relations professor Simon Mabon in the Conversation.

In recent weeks, regular demonstrations against the war in Gaza have escalated, with protestors now focusing on the Hashemite court and accusing the king of colluding with the Israelis.

As a result, “Jordan remains on the precipice,” wrote Mabon. “Bringing peace to Gaza is a necessary step in reducing tensions in the Hashemite kingdom, but it alone will probably be insufficient.”

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Victories, Great and Fixed

ALGERIA

Imane Khelif returned to Algeria a hero.

The Olympic gold medalist who garnered headlines over “uninformed speculation about her sex,” wrote the Associated Press, was the star in a parade celebrating her victories in her hometown of Tiaret, around 300 miles to the south of the capital, Algiers.

“She’s the daughter of the people,” said Dhikra Boukhavouba, an Algerian who studies in Paris, in an interview with the Washington Post.

Some Algerians won’t get a chance to take to the streets to enjoy similar jubilation after the North African country’s general election on Sept. 7.

Algerian police recently arrested opposition figure Fethi Ghares, picking him up at his home. The officers said they needed him for an “interrogation,” his wife told Agence France-Presse, but they didn’t explain why or produce a warrant. Officials still have not given any reason for his detainment, but the timing was unmistakable.

A secular leftist who opposes conservative Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune of the ruling National Liberation Front political party, Ghares had recently served two years in jail for insulting the president, harming national unity, and other charges. He formerly served as head of the Democratic and Social Movement party before Tebboune banned the party, added Africa News.

Tebboune, 78, is expected to win the election, earning a second and final five-year term, reported Reuters. The president has shored up support throughout the North African country’s political elite and its major civic and corporate institutions. Energy exports have helped make him popular. An OPEC member, Algeria is a key supplier of gas to Europe. Algeria is on track to double its gas exports in the next few months as winter approaches and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues to constrain supply.

To further consolidate his power, the president has also sought to control information, enacting new media laws that have resulted in more arrests of journalists, less free speech and expression, and pliant, state-owned press operations, World Politics Review explained.

Lastly, in addition to the arrest of Ghares, election officials rejected 13 candidates for the presidency, allowing only two to run against Tebboune: moderate Islamist Abdelaali Hassani and center-left socialist Youcef Aouchiche, wrote Radio France Internationale.

These efforts might be vital to Tebboune’s chances. Only 40 percent of voters turned out to cast their ballots in 2019 when he won 58 percent of the vote after pro-democracy protests weakened the longtime President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

Tebboune has barred such protests, noted Le Monde.

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Mob Rule

ISRAEL/ WEST BANK

When Moawya Ali saw dozens of armed and masked Israeli settlers rushing toward his house in the West Bank town of Jit on Aug. 15, he grabbed his five children and took them to a nearby house for safety.

When he returned, his house was on fire.

“We are (Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar) Ben-Gvir’s gang,” he heard the settlers shout, as he recounted to CNN. “They told us to leave, to go to Sinai, to Jordan, to Syria – or ‘we will come back for you and kill you.’”

The settlers fired bullets, tear gas and threw Molotov cocktails, setting homes and cars on fire. They attacked those rushing to help put out the flames. Among those was Rashid Sadah, 23, who was shot dead. An investigation is pending.

Meanwhile, soldiers arrived to stop the violence but didn’t arrest anyone. One senior security official told Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, “The soldiers did nothing to prevent the pogrom … They just stood by them, saw everything – and did nothing.”

Afterward, leaders from around the world condemned the attack and vowed to add additional sanctions. The attack also prompted condemnation from top Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu who warned that “those responsible for any offense will be apprehended and tried.”

That was unusual, wrote +972 magazine. “What was different this time, however, was the immediate condemnations of the attack by Israeli politicians,” it said. “Evidently spooked by the recent wave of US and international sanctions targeting violent settlers and their organizations – and the looming threat that these could soon be leveled at senior government figures and state-funded bodies – Israeli leaders were quick to denounce the latest pogrom.”

Meanwhile, former Palestinian Authority spokeswoman and analyst Nour Odeh dismissed the outrage, saying on the BBC that such attacks happened “on a daily basis.”

“These condemnations (by Israeli leaders) are viewed as performative by the Palestinian public because the track record is that the investigations go nowhere,” she said. “Nobody is prosecuted, nobody is held to account, and these settlers can count on the full support of members of the government to protect them.”

She’s right, according to Human Rights Watch, writing that these attacks are rarely investigated or anyone held responsible. Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group that documents settler violence, examined more than 1,600 cases in the West Bank between 2005 and 2023, and found that just 3 percent ended in a conviction.

Meanwhile, Israeli officials said a week later they had four suspects in custody, the Jerusalem Post wrote, also calling for swift justice.

The Jit attack, unusual for the reaction it sparked, is part of an escalation of assaults by settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank since Oct. 7, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which has recorded 1,143 settler attacks against Palestinians from Oct. 7 to Aug. 5. Of those, at least 114 attacks “led to Palestinian fatalities and injuries,” according to the report.

After the Aug. 15 attack, some of the pro-settler leaders in Netanyahu’s government described it as “criminal anarchist violence.” For example, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who lives in a settlement close to Jit, said the attackers were “in no way related to the settlements and the settlers.”

Ben-Gvir, named by the attackers as a patron, condemned the attack – but said he “told the (Israeli Defense Forces) Chief of the General Staff … that the fact that we don’t let soldiers shoot any terrorist who throws stones is leading to events of the type that occurred tonight.”

Still, as the Washington Post wrote, the escalation of attacks is part of a strategy by the Israeli government to “dramatically expanded Israel’s footprint” in the West Bank to accelerate “a long-term campaign by the country’s settler movement to thwart the creation of a Palestinian state.”

“The government has approved strategic land seizures – almost 6,000 acres this year alone – and major settlement construction, escalated demolition of Palestinian property and increased state support for illegally built settler outposts,” the newspaper wrote. “Together, they mark the most significant territorial changes in the West Bank in decades … making the two-state solution envisaged in past peace accords effectively impossible.”

That effectively nullifies the US government’s insistence that a resolution to the war in Gaza includes a pathway to an independent Palestinian state, analysts say. Government officials such as Smotrich don’t hide these intentions.

Meanwhile, Israeli human rights groups also say the government is complicit in these attacks. “This is pure settler terrorism – supported by the state, sponsored by our government,” Peace Now said on X.

The day after the violence, Ali and other residents of Jit surveyed the ruins of their homes. Afterward, they gathered with the family of Rashid Sadah to lay him to rest. His mother, Iman, told the New York Times her son had been someone who brought life into the household, someone hopeful about the future.

“He wanted to travel, he wanted to marry,” she said. “I wish he hadn’t gone to help.”

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Punch Drunk

ISRAEL/ LEBANON

Smoke billowed from the streets of Khiam in southern Lebanon recently after Israeli military forces shelled the area in response to the Iran-backed militant group and political party Hezbollah launching missiles into northern Israel.

In Dahieh, a densely populated residential and commercial district of the capital Beirut that was devastated during the 2006 war with Israel, residents believe they are next to be hit, as Israel has warned. As a result, some residents say they are moving to other parts of Beirut, but others have vowed to stay, going about their business, reported Euronews.

“I will not leave Dahieh, no matter what happens,” said Khalil Nassar, 75. “They are trying to intimidate us.”

Across the border, much of this part of northern Israel has been evacuated. Tens of thousands remain displaced, their villages ghost towns. Some residents wonder when they can return to an area that, because of nearly two decades of relative calm since the last full-blown war between Israel and Hezbollah, had been part of a push to attract start-ups and other businesses to Israel’s under-developed periphery, the Financial Times wrote. Others refuse to leave – but feel hopeless about returning to normal.

“For the last 17 years we thought we lived in Tuscany,” Nisan Zeevi, of Kfar Giladi kibbutz in Israel, about a mile from the Lebanese border, told the newspaper. “But when missiles started shooting from Lebanon, all of a sudden we realized that with all due respect to the start-ups, the innovation, climate tech, food tech, agtech, we live in the (expletive) Middle East. And we had forgotten about this.”

As residents flee and others stockpile goods, escalating violence in Khiam and elsewhere is one reason why mediators are now “scrambling” to tone down tensions between Lebanon and Israel, the BBC reported.

A full-blown conflict between Israel and Hezbollah could expand the fighting that is already occurring in the region, namely in Gaza. When in 2006 Israel and Hezbollah fought a war that lasted six weeks, more than 1,000 Lebanese civilians, 200 Hezbollah fighters, and 160 Israelis perished. Hezbollah survived that war, however, leading its leaders to consider themselves victorious in the fight, added Prensa Latina, a Cuban state-owned news service.

“The more time goes by of escalated tensions, the more time goes by of daily conflict, the more the odds and the chances go up for accidents, for mistakes, for inadvertent targets to be hit that could easily cause escalation that goes out of control,” US diplomat Amos Hochstein told the Associated Press during a recent visit to Lebanon.

Perhaps most importantly, an Israel-Hezbollah fight could also drag Iran into direct conflict with Israel.

Arguably Iran can’t afford a war, argued the Wall Street Journal. A new Iranian president has recently assumed office. The country’s Supreme Leader is old. The Iranian economy is suffering under sanctions and other economic weaknesses. But Iran has also vowed “severe revenge” for the Israeli assassinations of Hezbollah’s top commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut and Hamas’ political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran’s capital Tehran, noted CNN.

The Lebanese, meanwhile, are preparing for the worst, reported NBC News. They instituted a new system to move critically injured patients to high-level care quickly, constructed facilities to wash off weapons like white phosphorous, and trained surgeons in treating major wounds and trauma.

These moves likely won’t be enough. Before the specter of war reared its head following Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, Lebanon was considered a collapsing state, Sky News reported. Reeling from the economic and social consequences of the coronavirus pandemic, officials have been struggling to provide basic services amid an economic collapse and following a massive explosion four years ago that destroyed much of Beirut’s port.

Across the border, deep under the northern Israeli city of Haifa, a vast underground parking garage is now a hospital with 2,000 beds, operating theatres, a maternity ward and medical supplies stacked up in corners wait ready for patients.

“When, when, when is it going to happen? Nobody knows. We talk about it a lot,” Avi Weissman, the medical director of the center, told the BBC regarding a possible attack.

Still, many in Israel go about their business, shopping, to the beach, to a café, just like in Lebanon. They have been here before.

“We just want it to be calm,” said Shauli Jan of Nahariya, Lebanon, who was enjoying the beach as usual. “We prefer to have a political arrangement and not war.”

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Playing Chicken

MIDDLE EAST

Iranian leaders recently warned commercial airlines and others to avoid Iranian airspace as the country appeared poised to launch a war against Israel. The warning came as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Group of Seven foreign ministers that Iran could attack Israel within days.

That’s because the leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran are vowing vengeance for the killings of top personnel in Hamas and Hezbollah allegedly by Israel. “The warmongering and terrorist Zionist regime will receive harsh punishment in the suitable time, place, and capacity,” Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said.

An escalation might be what Israel intended, according to Elon Pinkas, a former Israeli diplomat and foreign policy advisor, writing in Haaretz. The killing of Hamas’ political leader in Tehran was either about “instant gratification,” or “about flirting with major escalation,” he wrote, adding it might have been done to drag the US into the war.

On July 30, Israel assassinated senior Hezbollah military commander Fuad Shukr in Lebanon, and two days later, Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh in Iran during the new Iranian president’s inauguration – Israel has not taken responsibility for the latter killing. And on Aug. 1, Israel’s military confirmed it had killed a top Hamas commander in Gaza, Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri (better known as Mohammed Deif), in an operation in July.  These killings significantly upped the ante in the conflict between Israel and the two Iranian-backed militant organizations, explained the Jerusalem Post, adding that Israel was becoming more proactive in undercutting its enemies, including in unfriendly territory.

But these Israeli attacks also significantly increased tensions throughout the Middle East, causing many analysts to fear an outbreak of a major conflict, Voice of America wrote. The US, for example, has been sending more naval ships to the region since the killings, while US officials have been conducting furious rounds of diplomacy, warning Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a peace deal and Tehran to refrain from escalating the situation.

Interestingly, the assassination took place after Netanyahu’s fiery address to American lawmakers in Washington. In the address, Netanyahu defended his country’s prosecution of the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip after Hamas’ staged its deadly terror attacks on Oct. 7, killing around 1,200 people and kidnapping more than 250 others. Israel has devastated the Gaza Strip in response, killing more than 40,000 people, Reuters wrote.

“Israel will fight until we destroy Hamas’s military capabilities and its rule in Gaza and bring all our hostages home,” Netanyahu told Congress, according to the Associated Press. “That’s what total victory means. And we will settle for nothing less.”

The speech in retrospect was tantamount to announcing a ramp-up in operations, wrote Sami Al-Arian, director of the Center for Islam and Global Affairs at Istanbul Zaim University, in an opinion piece in Middle East Eye that squarely blamed Israel for perpetuating the war in a “genocidal campaign” against the Palestinians.

Iranian leaders, meanwhile, say they wanted to avoid “all-out war,” Bloomberg reported. And Lebanon, reeling from economic and political crises, is not stable enough to engage in one, analysts say.

Already, there has been a surge of refugees trying to leave Lebanon to avoid more violence. Numerous countries have also recommended that their citizens leave the country on the Mediterranean, the BBC added.

The Middle East has seen the worst of these situations too many times before, said Blinken.

“Right now, the path that the region is on is for more conflicts, more violence, more suffering, more insecurity, and it is crucial that we break the cycle. And that starts with a ceasefire,” Blinken said. “To get there, it also first requires all parties to stop taking any escalatory actions. It also requires them to find reasons to come to an agreement, not to look for reasons to delay or say no to the agreement.”

Meanwhile, the killing of Haniyeh, the top negotiator for Hamas, may prevent the talks aimed at stopping the fighting in Gaza from going any further.

Qatar, which has hosted Haniyeh and other Hamas leaders at Washington’s request for years, and has been at the center of talks, was visibly frustrated. “Political assassinations and continued targeting of civilians in Gaza while talks continue leads us to ask, how can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?” Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Qatar’s prime minister and foreign minister, said on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Peace needs serious partners.”

But it added that while a further delay in the talks would be a blow to civilians in Gaza and the families of Israeli hostages still being held there, it could be welcomed by Netanyahu, who has been trying to derail the negotiations, the Washington Post wrote.

“Together, the recent operations underscored Israel’s willingness and ability to target adversaries beyond its borders, including deep in hostile territory – and suggested that Netanyahu’s government, like the leaders of Iran and its militant allies, is unlikely to heed calls from the United States and other outside powers to put the ongoing cycle of violence to rest.”

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Growing Back Limbs

IRAQ/ SYRIA

The terrorist group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (or ISIS) no longer makes headlines like the wars in Eastern Europe and the Middle East do. Ten years ago, however, it was a different story.

Then, amid the chaos that reigned after the US invaded Iraq and Syria plunged into civil war, ISIS seized Mosul, the second-largest city in Iraq, and began establishing a new caliphate on a wide swath of land in both countries. The group became the primary threat to world order at the time.

As PBS’ Frontline showed, before falling to a coalition of local and foreign forces in 2019, ISIS launched a reign of terror, committing genocide against the Yazidi minority, destroying non-Islamic religious sites, beheading journalists, humanitarian workers and others, and conducting terror attacks in Belgium, the United Kingdom, France, Turkey, and elsewhere.

Now, however, ISIS appears to be reconstituting. Citing US military sources, the Associated Press reported that ISIS is on track to double the number of attacks it has staged in Iraq and Syria in 2024 compared with 2023. Its terrorists already conducted 153 attacks through June this year. Last year, they staged 121 attacks. And since 2019, the group has killed more than 4,000 people.

This shift comes amid many changes in the past 10 years. As memories of ISIS’ rule have receded into the past, local leaders have changed their views on confronting the group.

In Syria, for example, Kurdish rebels fighting the Syrian central government have released around 1,500 aged or sick ISIS fighters who have been in detention since 2019, wrote Middle East Eye. The Kurds are detaining a total of 10,000 ISIS fighters, including 2,000 whose home countries have refused to take them back.

Iraqi leaders have also wanted American and other foreign troops to leave the country, reported Rudaw, a Kurdish news outlet. Their decision partly stems from frustration with American strikes against pro-Iranian military groups and interests in Iraq. ISIS groups, incidentally, have attacked US installations in Iraq and Syria as payback for American support for Israel’s war against the Iranian-supported Palestinian terror group Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Al Jazeera added.

These developments potentially have emboldened ISIS to expand its reach beyond Iraq and Syria, too. ISIS fighters, who are radical Sunni Muslims, recently attacked a Shiite Muslim mosque in Oman. An ISIS affiliate has been active in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran. The group is also active in Nigeria, Niger, Mali, and other African countries. In Mozambique, an ISIS-linked force has caused violence that has claimed 6,000 lives and displaced more than one million people, added World Politics Review.

It’s a deadly and oppressive but remarkably resilient franchise, wrote the Economist: “The history of global jihadism is one of reinvention under pressure from the West.”

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The Practical Prince

SAUDI ARABIA

Chinese solar panel companies TCL Zhonghuan and Jinko Solar reached a $3-billion deal with Saudi Arabian leaders recently to build new solar farms. The agreement highlights how Saudi Arabia has been investing heavily in renewable energy – including billions in green hydrogen plants, noted Oil.com – as it earns billions exporting oil, as well as the desert kingdom’s new pivot to closer relations with China.

Saudi Arabia has also been purchasing more weapons and military equipment from China, wrote Bloomberg, a topic that was likely discussed during a recent meeting between Prince Khalid bin Salman, the Saudi defense minister, and Chinese leaders during a visit to the Chinese capital of Beijing in June.

Some suggested these developments point to how officials in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, might be interested in replacing the US, their current closest ally, with China, a country that is less opposed to authoritarian governments than the US and rejects Western economic sanctions on Russia and other nations, the South China Morning Post reported.

However, that idea has holes. The US and Saudi Arabia partnership is old, explained the Council on Foreign Relations. The two sides recently reached a deal to collaborate on civilian space exploration, for example, CNBC wrote. American diplomats have also been speaking closely with Saudi officials on a security pact that is the centerpiece of US President Joe Biden’s agenda in the region, according to the Brookings Institution. In return, the Financial Times added, Biden would expect Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the leader of the country, to recognize Israel, a potentially massive breakthrough in the campaign for the acceptance of the Jewish state.

Still, Saudi Arabia, a Sunni Muslim power, recently reduced tensions with an important Chinese ally – Iran, a Shiite Muslim power – in their competition for hegemony in the Middle East. As World Politics Review noted, Saudi Arabia and Iran have re-established diplomatic relations, though the Saudis have been less vocal in their condemnation of Israel’s war against the Palestinian terror group Hamas than their Iranian counterparts. Iran considers Israel its top enemy.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman argued that everyone involved had a chance to help the region. Bin Salman will always be infamous for his decision to murder critics like journalist Jamal Khashoggi. But he has also developed a nuanced policy regime that has stifled radical Islamists who might become jihadists, has aimed to improve the Saudi economy, and stabilize the region, including better relations with Israel. The prince is practical, in other words.

The world has a chance to manage these changes or let them spin out of control but as Friedman says, the momentum is positive, especially with bin Salman lifting restrictions on women from driving, working and attending sporting events, jailing about 500 of the most extreme clerics and moving the country economically in a direction that has led investors to become positively giddy.

“To put it bluntly, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has put his country’s worst religious extremists in jail, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has put his country’s worst religious extremists in his cabinet,” he wrote. As a result, bin Salman’s policies mean Saudi Arabian society has seen “the most rapid social changes anywhere in the world.”

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A Moderate’s Tale

IRAN

A moderate candidate, Masoud Pezeshkian, 69, shockingly and decisively won the Iranian election earlier this month after his hardline conservative predecessor died in a helicopter crash in May. The cardiac surgeon’s victory over his conservative rivals, despite the purported wishes of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the orthodox cleric who really runs the country, has inspired young Iranians who want change, reported the BBC.

The question now is: Will they get it?

Amid the protests that engulfed Iran after the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022 while in custody over a dress-code violation, Pezeshkian, a former health minister and lawmaker, said it was “unacceptable in the Islamic Republic to arrest a girl for her hijab and then hand over her dead body to her family,” the Associated Press wrote.

During a presidential debate, he criticized the country’s elites, including himself, for failing to control living costs, censorship and the treatment of women. Pezeshkian was allied with moderate officials who negotiated the 2015 agreement to shutter Iran’s nuclear weapons program, CNN reported. The US pulled out of the deal in 2018, however.

Whether Pezeshkian can end Iran’s political isolation from the West and solve the country’s economic woes is an open question, however, because of two political truths, the Washington Post noted. First, the Iranian president’s powers are limited compared with the supreme leader’s. Second, tensions in the Gaza Strip because of the war between Israel and Hamas also threaten to put Iran further at odds with the US and its allies.

Iran, for example, supports Hamas. Pezeshkian will almost certainly uphold that policy.

“The Islamic Republic has always supported the resistance of the people of the region against the illegitimate Zionist regime,” said Pezeshkian in a message to Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, the Iran-backed political party and militant group in Lebanon, according to Reuters. “I am certain that the resistance movements in the region will not allow this regime to continue its warmongering and criminal policies against the oppressed people of Palestine and other nations.”

American officials, meanwhile, don’t expect many other changes, added Voice of America. They think it unlikely that Pezeshkian would re-launch the nuclear talks, for example. Others are more optimistic, however.

Writing in World Politics Review, Abolghasem Bayyenat of the University of Oklahoma says that the recent past in Iran has shown that “a change in presidents in conjunction with other favorable conditions can contribute to foreign policy shifts.”

“He is expected to advocate for a more prudent and less confrontational foreign policy in tune with reformist politicians’ balanced conception of the ideological, economic and national security interests of the state,” he wrote.

One big reason for a change of heart in foreign policy might be the state of the Iranian economy, which is on a negative trajectory. Capital is flying out of the country. Few have confidence in local markets, businesses, and industries.

As a result, injecting optimism and growth into that mix will be hard for Pezeshkian because the economic situation is the result of an increasingly interfering government and the growing presence of military organizations in all economic sectors – and rising corruption that cripples business plans and economic interactions, wrote Ali Dadpay, an associate professor at the University of North Texas Health Science Center and specialist on Iran, for the Stimson Center.

“Iranians are not impressed by Pezeshkian’s promise to lift sanctions,” he wrote. “They know that without curbing the influence of military organizations and security apparatuses, the economic situation stands little chance of improvement, even if sanctions are eased.”

He added: “To hope for a better future is a luxury many Iranians can ill afford.”

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The Endgame That Wasn’t

SYRIA

Syrian voters will elect their members of parliament on July 15 – or at least some of them will.

That’s because polls are only open to those voters who live in territory under the control of President Bashar al-Assad, which is most of Syria – but not all of it.

As a result, the elections arguably will be a sham, according to the Atlantic Council, writing that they are designed to legitimize Assad’s bloodthirsty regime under the Baath Party as slivers of the country remain in revolt against the central government. “The polls will be held again against a backdrop of massive displacement, unresolved conflict, partial occupation, and an intransigent regime,” the American think tank said.

Meanwhile, rebel leaders have called on Syrians to boycott the election, reported Asharq al-Awsat, a pan-Arab newspaper headquartered in London. The rebels now control only a small amount of territory since Assad, with the help of Russia and Iran, largely defeated them in recent years.

As the Voice of America wrote, the Syrian Civil War started in 2011 as a protest against Assad’s rule, then expanded until it consumed the country and region. As many as 600,000 people have died while 13 million are displaced, both within the country and outside of it. Most Arab countries, meanwhile, have abandoned efforts to reach an end to the fighting and welcomed Assad back into the fold.

World Politics Review referred to the situation as Syria’s “never-ending endgame.”

In this endgame, meanwhile, the economic situation remains dire for those who remain in Syria, where nine out of 10 people live below the poverty level: The United Nations says that more than 15 million Syrians, or 70 percent of the total population, need humanitarian assistance.

The economy is in shambles and inflation has raged out of control with the Syrian pound losing 99.64 of its value against the dollar compared with its value pre-2011, according to Manaf Quman, an economics researcher at the Turkey-based Omran Center for Studies: “The value of Syrian currency has become less than it costs to print it.”

“A citizen lives most of the month on aid and money transfers from abroad, at a time when his salary is not enough to cover the costs of the first week of the month,” Quman said.

Karam Shaar, director of the Syria Program at the Observatory of Political and Economic Networks, told Syria Direct that the average Syrian’s living situation is “the worst since the beginning of the 20th century … and the threshold of how bad things get cannot be determined.”

Demonstrations against rising prices and inflation have triggered protests over the past year. It has also fueled emigration.

However, much of the world appears to be tiring of the situation, exhibiting the compassion fatigue that comes with holding out hope for Syria – or hosting its nationals. Recently, Agence France-Presse reported, mobs in central Turkey went on a rampage against Syrian-owned businesses after a Syrian man was accused of harassing a child. Consequently, in Afrin, a city in northern Syria, angry Syrians clashed with Turkish troops. Four died in the violence.

These tensions are likely one reason why Turkish leaders have sought to mend fences with Assad, but US officials have said they won’t accept the Syrian president’s legitimacy until they see him take steps to respect human rights and improve the lives of his people, wrote Rudaw, a Kurdish news broadcaster based in Iraq.

Meanwhile, the search for justice for the victims of the Syrian regime goes on.

French prosecutors also recently asked a court in their country to review an arrest warrant issued for Assad, based on his alleged role in war crimes including chemical attacks against his citizens in 2013, according to Radio France Internationale. The court upheld it.

Mazen Darwish, director of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression, told Al Jazeera that the decision “shows that there is no immunity when we are talking about crimes against humanity and using chemical weapons against civilians.”

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Passing the Bar

IRAN

Iran’s mullahs approved six candidates to run for president on June 28, the date for a potentially tectonic election that comes as the West Asian country could face more political instability than ever.

The winner will replace Ebrahim Raisi, the late conservative president who died in a helicopter crash in May. In Iran, the unelected Shiite Muslim supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is the undisputed head of state who controls the government, Al Jazeera explained. But the role of president is considered to be the number two in power. Raisi, furthermore, was a close Ali Khamenei ally. He was even widely suspected as the frontrunner to become the next ayatollah.

Now, whoever succeeds Raisi appears to have two options with Khamenei – either happily continue the supreme leader’s repressive policies against ethnic minorities, non-Muslims, secular institutions, universal human rights, women, and political dissidents, or butt heads with the mullahs and face removal.

They will also have to choose whether to continue Iran’s recently muscular foreign policy and support for Russia and its Ukraine war, noted Nikkei Asia.

That’s why most of the six candidates are hardliners, the BBC reported. Khamenei’s favorite might be Saeed Jalili, who led Iran’s efforts to stonewall at previous nuclear talks with the US and others. Another top contender, the Associated Press wrote, is Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, the former mayor of the capital Tehran who is linked to the Revolutionary Guard, an elite fighting force, intelligence agency and industrial empire tasked with protecting the Islamic Republic’s sanctity.

Other developments might inspire a new president to confront the supreme leader, however.

Since 2022, civil unrest has rocked Iran as citizens have taken to the streets to protest the killing of a young woman in police custody, after arresting her on charges of violating the country’s dress code for women. Displeasure with the government is widely blamed for the turnout in legislative elections in March hitting record lows, according to CNN. Voters younger than 35 comprise around a third of the electorate. Many are among the most disaffected.

Under these circumstances, the Western press has written much about Masoud Pezeshkian, a parliamentarian who has staked out pro-Western positions and more tolerant social policies. Analysts at the Atlantic Council were surprised that the mullahs approved his candidacy.

Pezeshkian has floated the idea of rejoining US-led international talks to end its nuclear weapons program, and questioned if the Koran deems hijabs to be compulsory, for example, wrote the Financial Times. He has also appealed directly to youths, reported the Nation, releasing a documentary called “Gen Z: A View Into the Demands of a New Generation” that features him talking about young people’s concerns.

But Pezeshkian’s candidacy might also be a ploy to create “the illusion of political competition” in Iran’s authoritarian system for both foreign and domestic critics, concluded War on the Rocks.

Regardless, winning would only be his first battle.

“If the challenge of winning the election seems large,” Eurasia Group Iran expert Gregory Brew told Gzero, “the even greater challenge would be governing effectively as a reformist president – a challenge previous Iranian presidents, such as Mohammad Khatami and Hassan Rouhani, have largely failed to overcome.”

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